Direct Share Links for Social Networks
With all the various ways you can have your visitors, community or fans share your content with their friends, you have a lot of options to pick from. You can either set up all the javascript for each button, which will end up having to load a lot of extra resources on each page. You can use a service like ShareThis which creates a bar that has various sharing methods that you can customize, but still not have full control of the buttons. Or the best method, create your own setup which you can pick the images, layout, and not have to load any external resources.
With creating your own method, all you have to do is link an image or text to the proper website address. Below I have listed the most popular services and their sharing links. You can use these urls inside your javascript to create the buttons, in PHP scripts or just normal links inside of pages and emails.
In the following links, there are some “variables” you will have to change. Always test the link before just publishing it on your site. I tried to test out all of the follow social networks, but since I don’t have some of them, I couldn’t test them.
When I mention that something has to be encoded below, I mean URL Encoded. This encoding changes all non-alphanumeric characters besides -_. (dash, underscore, period) to it’s hexadecimal value append to a % (percent) symbol. For example, a $ (dollar sign) would be turned into %24. Spaces are replaced with a + (plus) sign.
Variables:
ENCODED_URL: Website url that is encoded.
HASH_TAGS: Text of hashtags, separated by commas. Does not include the hash symbol.
ENCODED_TEXT: Website Description or various text to be shown along with link. This content has to be encoded.
ENCODED_TITLE: The website title or headline. Content has to be encoded.
ENCODED_IMAGE_URL: An image url to be shared along with the URL. This has to be encoded.
ENCODED_QUOTE: Same as ENCODED_TEXT, but is a quote you are sharing with others.
QUOTE_SOURCE: The source of a quote. Either a person or a website link. Has to be encoded.
YOUTUBE_USERNAME: A youtube username. Doesn't have to be encoded since all usernames are alpha-numeric.
Google Plus:
https://plus.google.com/share?url=ENCODED_URL
Twitter:
https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?hashtags=HASH_TAGS&text=ENCODED_TEXT&url=ENCODED_URL
Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=ENCODED_URL
Digg:
http://digg.com/submit?url=ENCODED_URL
StumbleUpon:
http://www.stumbleupon.com/badge/?url=ENCODED_URL
Reddit:
http://www.reddit.com/submit?url=ENCODED_URL&title=ENCODED_TITLE
Pinterest:
http://www.pinterest.com/pin/create/button/?url=ENCODED_URL&media=ENCODED_IMAGE_URL&description=ENCODED_TEXT
LinkedIn:
http://www.linkedin.com/cws/share?isFramed=true&url=ENCODED_URL
Tumblr:
Share Link
http://www.tumblr.com/share/link?url=ENCODED_URL&name=ENCODED_TITLE&description=ENCODED_TEXT
http://www.tumblr.com/share?v=3&u=ENCODED_URL&t=ENCODED_TITLE
Share Quote
http://www.tumblr.com/share/quote?quote=ENCODED_QUOTE&source=QUOTE_SOURCE
Share Picture
http://www.tumblr.com/share/photo?source=ENCODED_IMAGE_URL&caption=ENCODED_TEXT&click_thru=ENCODED_URL
YouTube Subscribe:
http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=YOUTUBE_USERNAME